Therapy advice to put in your pocket and take with you.

Posts tagged ‘good relationship’

Yesterday I blogged about setting clear, objective measurable goals. While this is the time of year for short term goals, this strategy applies also to long-term and life goals, as well as how you choose to live in your daily life. When you tell yourself you want to be happy, or healthy, or in a good relationship, what do you really mean by that? It’s your life, you can define it how you want. But sometimes we don’t define it, we just wait to feel it. And the feeling never comes. Why not? Often that’s because we don’t know what we are looking for.

Today I met with a woman who talked about concerns in her marriage and how these same patterns have gone on for years and never seem to get better. When I suggested she and her husband talk about things, she said, oh yeah we do, but it never goes anywhere, we are just so different. I said take some time and discuss how you would like your relationship to be. What would it look like? What do you need from it, what does he need from it? Stop complaining about what has gone wrong in the past and be forward-thinking, ask yourselves where do you go from here? If you have a complaint, have a request attached to it. Be specific about what you would like from each other in the future. Get creative. This is your relationship, what are all the things you would like to have in a relationship, and then discuss how to make those happen. Her response? “We’ve never had a conversation like that before”.

This technique can be utilized with any topic. Do you want to be successful? What does ‘successful’ mean to you? Money? How much? Fame? In what arena? Do you want to be happy? What will you feel like when you are happy? How will you know? When is the last time you felt happy? What kind of things make you happy? Breaking your goals into descriptive words can help you decide what you can do today and every day that will set you on that path, and also how you’ll know when you are living it.

Don’t limit yourself. What do you wish? Many times the things we wish for are more attainable and achieveable than we believe. We stop ourselves because of fear or self-doubt, or just because we don’t know how to get started.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Talk to someone who seems to be doing what you’d like to be doing, a friend, a colleague, and ask how they got started and how they keep going. See a therapist or hire a trainer. Get books or look at a website. Chances are whatever you are thinking of doing, “there’s an app for that.”

The bottom line is, allow yourself to brainstorm, dream big, get creative, and then break it down into a description of what it would really look like. Plant a seed, and watch it grow. Because you can be a rock star!